Tom Sawyer, Time Traveler
by Errant Kitten
Summary: Post "Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" there were a few short novellas about Tom,Huck and Jim, such as "Tom Sawyer, Detective" This time-travelling story is a bit in that range...hopefully everyone will find it humorous.
1. Chapter 1

TOM SAWYER, TIME TRAVELER

It was about half a mile after we left Mr. H.G. Wells's Time Machine that we realized that we might've pressed the wrong dial, or somesuch. Tom Sawyer and I and big black Jim had hoped to go back in time to the days of the Knights of the Round Table

Or really, Tom did—he wanted to straighten out the misunderstanding between Lancelot, King Arthur, and the Queen they both loved. I'd have been happy with my corncob pipe and my fishing rod, and I still don't know why Jim had come along.

I warn't sure how the devil time travel worked, but Mr. Wells, who was visiting Missouri for his lumbago said "Huckleberry, you and your friends are perfect subjects for this invigorating experiment." And, of course I was a muggings who didn't listen when Jim said "Huck, le's run!"

Now we'd alighted from the Time Machine after it quit spinnin, and we were still in Cardiff Field, the big grassy meadow in our town of St. Petersburg. So Tom was mighty annoyed, he was damning Mr. Wells as some kind of confidence man, although we hadn't given the good doctor any money.

"I can't believe it, 'taint a knight or a squire in sight, or even a wizard, where's Merlin?" Tom was disgusted.

"Well, mebbe Merlin don't hang around in Cardiff's Meadow, Tom. Maybe he's in a tavern somewheres." I ventured.

"No, no…he should be here to greet me, I'd think." Tom insisted. "A wizard would know I was coming, 'specially to straighten things out between Arthur and Queen Guinevere, and perhaps I can also referee the jousting contests."

One thing about Tom Sawyer, he always thought well of himself.

"We might as well get home, Aunt Polly made biscuits, Huck." That'll get his mind off Sir Lancelot and those silly Sir Walter Scott novels, I thinks. But along as we leave the meadow, and there's this girl.

Tom and I try to look away politely, and Jim just gapes, because the young lady appears to have lost her dress! She's wearing a little white blouse and blue dungarees that have been cut-off at the hip level. What idiot would ruin a good pair of blue jeans that way, I think, and what on earth is a girl doing wearing them?

But the little lady giggles at us, and eventually Tom looks over at her. "Uh, Miss, can we be of any assistance?"

She laughs again, and I am sure she's insane. Suddenly we hear a noise—BEEP! A bit like a bluebird being strangled. The girl reaches in a little stitched bag she is carrying and pulls out a little rectangular thing—not exactly a rock—and fits it in her palm, and begins poking it, and the one side of it lights up.

"Huck, she de debbil" Jim whispers in my ear, and I'm not doubting it.

Then the devil-girl puts the rectangular not-a-rock up to the side of her head(I ducked, I thought she was going to throw it at me when she a-lifted it) and began talking.

"Cathy? Dude what's up?"

Tom, Jim and I looked up in the sky. Jim looked a bit to the left and screamed, throwing himself on the ground and hiding his eyes.

Tom and I looked over and a long metal bird with humongous wings was going by…up there in the air. Tom and I, our eyes met. Was this some creation of Merlin's?

Tom poked me. The girl had dropped the rectangular not-a-rock and gone to her knees, and was rubbing Jim's shoulder. A little white girl, that's right.

"Sir," she asked Jim. "Are you, like, having some kind of epileptic fit? Can I help?"

If the metal bird scared Jim, this completely unhinged him, and he rolled away from the girl as if she were on fire. Jim was now a free man, but he'd been property for quite a long time, and having a little white woman rubbing his shoulder was awful peculiar.

"I'se all right, ma'am." Jim got up and the girl rose too, picking up her little rectangular thing. And then she was talking with it at her ear.

"Cathy? Yeah. These guys with like, seriously ugly clothes and an African-American gentlemen just came out of John F. Kennedy Memorial Meadow? They might be developmentally disabled. Yeah. The black guy may be their teacher or counselor."

"Tom?" I said feebly, "If this is Sir Lancelot's time I don't want no part of it. Let's take our uh, teacher and high tail it back to the Time Machine."

But Tom was looking carefully at the girl. Tom Sawyer gets distracted by girls, like no fellow I've ever known. You'd think traveling in time away from Becky Thatcher, he'd have forgotten about all that love nonsense, but Tom was always one to be distracted by a pretty ankle.

The girl had taken the rectangular object away from the side of her head and gave Tom a nice smile. "Are you like, from the area, man? You seem like you've lost your shoes. What's the deal with farmer boy's hat there?"

My straw hat? Of course we ain't wearing shoes. It's July.

"We-uh, we've just been traveling from out of town, but I'm Tom Sawyer." Tom announces himself as if he's the King of Spain, but it means no nevermind to the young lady.

"Cool, I'm Shauna. Love meeting tourists. Like, are you looking for a place to stay? My mom's got a B & B in town." Shauna paused. "Mom would be like, totally stoked if you guys could improve her economy ke pasa?"

"Beenbee?" Tom's eyes were goggling, and I wondered if I'd need a foreign phrase book to communicate with this gal. Jim was back looking in the sky, and there was reason, too. A glass bubble thing with a spinning paddle on top of it was going by the sun, and another silver bird was pulling a sign along that said "LIVE IT UP AT PACO'S TACOS!"

"Yeah, B&B. Stands for Bed and Breakfast. My dad split last year, and Mom has sort of an impromptu boardinghouse to bring in some money."

"Money" Tom breathed. Finally a word we understood. Tom turned to me. "She—Miss Shauna's ma has a place we can sleep if we pay her."

"What about Jim?" I had to ask. Was there quarters for his kind?

"Yeah, he can share a room with you guys."

Huh.


	2. Chapter 2

GITTIN' OUR BEARINGS

Well, we had some of the gold we'd gotten from the Injun Joe escapade with us, and that seems to be good trade in any time o' history, and Shauna took us to an antique coinage shop, and we got some of the new currency, though I didn't think much of it all being in paper.

"Huck, you don't realize how convenient this is, these greenbacks" says Tom Sawyer. "Put a hundred of 'em in a pocket, you still can get around without having your suspenders weighed down."

"I don't think much of tradin' with material that I could use to wipe my backside with in the outhouse." I grumbled, but Tom pointed out that it would be a neat trick to hide your money in an outhouse instead of having to take it to a bank, and I had to agree.

"And think, Huck, you could use it twice, to wipe and then spend-people would have to take it in trade, and if they didn't want to touch the stained greenbacks, we could sell 'em tongs to handle the money, so'd they not have to touch the bodily waste, we'd be rich."

That Tom Sawyer, he did think of ever'thing.

Shauna told us she couldn't take us to her Ma's unless we had proper duds on; mine were clean and not falling apart, but I learnt from Aunt Polly, Aunt Sally and the Widow Douglas you can't argue with a woman.

We went to this mighty long building called a Galleria, or as Shauna called it "the strip mall." Whoever designed it had madness on his mind, for most of the walls were made of glass, and I didn't understand how anyone could have a place of business so flimsy.

Most of the people in our town had two to three sets of clothing if they was prosperous, some just homespun, but there was old Thompson's mercantile. I'd been forced, during the Widow Douglas's efforts to sivilize me to take several trips there, and get mighty uncomfortable but pretty clothing.

Shauna told us that she shopped several times a week at this Galleria, and would get us something that would make her proud to be seen with us.

She picked me out a shirt that resembled a short white painter's smock, but with writing on it—"I'M WITH STUPID" and then an arrow beneath the letters. Tom objected to this shirt strenuously, unless he was the one to wear it, so then Shauna got another blouse that was similar except it had some ugly looking men's picture and then "Guns and Roses" written under it.

I didn't want to touch the thing, but Tom told me I must wear it, as when in Rome, you must do as the Romans do. Shauna got me a pair of trousers that held up without suspenders, called "khakis", and some shoes made of rubber, called Nikes.

"Like, don't worry, you look so bitchin, too bad we don't have time to get you an earring or some ink'" Shauna was trying to encourage me, I reckon.

Jim was looking at this statue thing that was in the store, dressed in what appeared to be a plaid overall with no leg material, much like Shauna's blue jeans.

"Huck, do you think dis is some kind of idol? De Bible says we ain't supposed to worship idols."

"I reckon if it were an idol, Jim, it wouldn't be dressed so hideous." I replied.

After we left the Galleria, Shauna took us to something horrible called "Lasertag". After me and Jim quit throwing up, we all finally went to her Ma's house at the Beembee.

I reckon I remembered the street that Shauna's Ma lived on, for it was still the town of St. Petersburg, but it seemed like folks never got anything done, for all the time they spent stopping into places to buy things.

On the corner before reaching Shauna's Ma's place, we had to stop at a little store called Starbucks, and Shauna asked Tom and me if we wanted coffee.

Well, you know, we hadn't just got up or nothin' and I didn't see the point, but Tom wandered right into the place after Shauna and when he came out he was holding a paper cup of something called a Decaf Latte CappuChinner, or some such.

"It tastes like sugar and mud, Huck, I can't imagine why Shauna's so taken with it, but maybe it's some kind of magic potion" After Tom sipped a bit of it, he offered some to me, but I am awful shy about anything to drink but water.

Outside, there was some young chap about a year or so younger than Tom and I—twelve or thirteen, thereabouts,-and he was wheeling himself up and down the block on a long piece of wood with roller skate wheels on the front and the back… and the boy was wearing some kind of hard plastic thing on his head.

"D'you think the fellow broke his scooter?" I remembered little chaps liked riding up and down the road on scooters, but the thing on his head mystified me.

"I'm not sure. Possibly the head thing indicates he's some kind of royalty" said the mystified Tom. Tom had never given up hope that we might meet some kings and princes.

"But you'd think he'd have some kind of horse, right?" Seemed a little silly that the fellow would have to tool along on a tiny little wooden half-scooter, didn't royalty have lots of money?

But then Shauna came out, and led us to her mother's Beembee, and we went inside. In Shauna's Ma's sitting parlor, or as Shauna later called it the "rec room" there appeared to be a large square with magical lines and horrible colors bouncing around it that made me, Tom and Jim dizzy.

"What are those shapes, it looks as if one of those French paintings has gone awry." Tom asked, gaping at this yellow, shouting blob.

"That's Spongebob Squarepants on Blu-Ray, babe. He's so random now."

Like I said earlier, Shauna needed a phrase book just for when she coughed.


End file.
